Empire Wrestling
Empire Wrestling (EW) was an American professional wrestling promotion owned and operated by TNA Hall of Fame member and world champion wrestler Benjamin Jameson. Originally, the promotion started out as a training facility ran by Frank Richards called All-American Wrestling School until the name was changed to All-Magnitude X Wrestling (AMX Wrestling) for Vince McMahon to own naming rights and utilizing the federation as the developmental territory for World Wrestling Entertainment. McMahon then changed the name to World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in May 2006 and Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) only a month later before the promotion closed until a year later where Tony D'Amonte bought the rights from WWE to use the AMX Wrestling name. Background Vince McMahon had aspirations of expanding the developmental territories for his well-known wrestling promotion, World Wrestling Entertainment, toward the western portion of the United States. After much deliberation between several of his employees, past contacts, and independent promoters, McMahon chose Frank Ricahrds and his All-American Wrestling School based out of Los Angeles, California. Richards, a former wrestler-turned-trainer took the job as the founder of McMahon's third in-house development area under WWE's umbrella so long as the organization was re-branded for legal issues. Agreeing to Vince's terms, Frank reestablished his school as a full-time promotion and renamed it to All-Magnitude X Wrestling. 'All Magnitude X Wrestling (2006; 2007)' Weeks of acquiring talent, Richards managed to gain a twelve-episode contract with a local television show named AMX Live. Richards would air these taped cards from various locations throughout Los Angeles county in cities such as Burbank, Ontario, Pomona, and Whittier. On May 6, AMX Wrestling managed to gain its first titleholder as The Warrior defeated Chronic James and Jeremy Bannister in a three-way match to be declared the inaugural AMX Championship. Warrior would lose the belt two weeks later in a ladder match against Bannister, who unfortunately was the second and last person to win the title because operations had ceased. In the midst of running AMX Wrestling, Richards had failed to run a proper business within the financial aspect as his promotion lost more money that it could gain. Reasons for the lack of finance include off-air advertisements affected by abysmal television ratings and horrendous merchandising sales. Also, Richards' supposedly did not want to pay money out of his own pocket to fund the promotion into a growing entity and thus the culmination of AMX Wrestling dissolving was apparent from the beginning. Many critics and peers of both Richards and McMahon cite their derailing micromanaging viewpoints that were not able to have them delegate proper assignments to understudies. Fourteen months of being off the air and relegating back to becoming a training facility to mentor upcoming wrestlers, AMX Wrestling, along with Frank Richards, returned but the promotion would be headed by film director, and producer, and business entrepreneur Tony D'Amonte. With his production company, Big 4 Productions, AMX Wrestling easily earned a thirteen-episode contract by FOX to air AMX Shockwave on Fox Sports Net throughout the country. In the weeks heading into AMX Wrestling's revival in the summer of 2007, D'Amonte was caught in a whirlwind of publicity after he allegedly was a producing numerous cons within the television industry, including to drag AMX Wrestling into his ponzi scheme. Then two days before the airing of the promotion's reopening, legal documents suggested D'Amonte had forged almost five dozen checks that were all wired to an offshore account. On August 26, the night of AMX's first show, a dismal rating proved to be enough evidence of cutting ties with B4P and canceling the series after only one episode. 'World Championship Wrestling (2006)' After the initial experiment with AMX Wrestling miserably failed, Vince McMahon decided to to have a familiar name take its place and rather host a popular show with more well-known talent. This idea commenced with World Championship Wrestling returning to national prominence as the very same company McMahon had overtaken in the ratings and ultimately bought out along with their roster would become its own entity and air own shows, both Nitro and Thunder, as pre-shows to the already existing lineup of Raw and SmackDown. As AMX Wrestling shifted to being WCW, the needed facelift brought McMahon the success he had been searching. While both Monday and Thursday night shows began on a high note, airing some well-praised matches to entertain the crowds before the airing of Raw or taping of SmackDown, the aura of a brand that once ruled the Monday Night Wars quickly began to deteriorate when a noticeable decline of quality matches began to take place along with unpopular segments and unfavorable storylines that offered nothing but pre-show fodder for those in attendance. Also, as the television ratings did not provide the sustainability that the brand was needing in order to survive, it had been neglected enough for McMahon to cut its ties with WCW. 'Extreme Championship Wrestling (2006)' Entering the month of July, McMahon held meetings with his creative team while both former WCW shows, Monday Night Nitro and Thursday Night Thunder, he decided to revitalize yet another former rival to see if fans could cling onto another past promotion. This time, it was Extreme Championship Wrestling that was penned to return. Along with the name, several talents returned to the WWE-ran ECW as wrestlers like Raven, Axl Rotten, and Nova joined the show that would air on Tuesday nights as ECW Live. Prominent talent such as Demon and Eclipz began to showcase their abilities as the two would become a tag team and work their way up the WWE ladder, so much so that they came close to defeating the then-WWE Tag Team Champions, Paul London and Brian Kendrick. However, only less than a week after the taping of the match, Eclipz was found dead in his San Francisco apartment. The immediate death followed a unanimous decision by the talent to not perform the ensuing week and signed a petition for McMahon to successfully cease any and all ECW operations. 'Empire Wrestling (2011)' In July 2011, Benjamin Jameson was recently capping off his hall of fame career, successfully defending the recently won TNA Undisputed Championship in Dallas at a pay-per-view event. That match, however, would be the last bout Jameson would participate in as he would leave the organization due to events that caused a major, and possibly a permanent, riff between both parties. Throughout the entire back end of the summer, Jameson obtained as many resources as he could and eventually built a his own promotion from the bottom called Empire Wrestling with the help of two multimillionaires: Daniel Caldwell, the CEO of Caldwell Industries, and Ace Montgomery, a political advocate and the founder of his own race team Ace Motorsports. Originally, Jameson wanted to name the organization he had been part of on two occasions, AMX Wrestling, but rather chose a name that "would resonate the expansion that we hopefully will receive if this thing gets big," he said. Successfully obtaining a television deal, Empire Wrestling would hold a total of five events including a pay-per-view show that crowned its only champion as Heather Helmsley defeated an up-and-coming Johnny Caldwell, who is currently known as Slash and is the WEW World Champion. The title bout, however, would be the last match televised by the organization until it was abruptly canceled by its network after the event for what would turn out to be a legal matter involving Slash. This immediately caused an uproar as hundreds were released from their jobs and entered an already-dwindling economy. As of November 2011, Jameson nor the network stated to have any plans on the promotion's return. Championships Notable personnel See also *Benjamin Jameson *Demon * Eclipz *List of AMX pay-per-view events * List of AMX World Champions